I still find it endearing that Pepperidge Farms gives each of its cookie varieties their own name.  Most companies are content to just call it a "white chocolate chunk macadamia nut cookie," but to Pepperidge Farms, it's a Tahoe.

The combination of white chocolate and macadamia nuts seems so quintessentially 80s that I'm surprised to see it still in action.  It's a very pale combination - pale in color, and pale in taste.  Subtle, I should say, like a good vanilla ice cream.

At any rate, Tahoe is one of my favorite Pepperidge Farms flavors.  The crispy cookie is nicely set off by the crunch of the macadamia nuts.  White chocolate macadamia nut cookies are often far too sweet and cloying, but Pepperidge Farms manages to nicely toe the line.  

This is a cookie that is much more about texture than taste, the taste being (as previously mentioned) in a word, "pale."  Therefore it's commendable that Pepperidge Farms doesn't skimp on the macadamia nuts, or on the white chocolate chunks.  Both of the inclusions are also nicely sized - not so large as to be obtrusive, but not so small as to get lost in the sizeable cookie.

I did some searching, but I couldn't find any historical information on the white chocolate and macadamia nut pairing.  It seems to me that it first hit the scene in the mid 1980s, along with other famous 1980s standards like pesto and quiche.  

Macadamia nuts were fabulously expensive then - not that they're super cheap now - and white chocolate was still somewhat unusual.  The combination was as luxe and hip as a black velvet scrunchie, or a fine Nagel print.

No discussion of white chocolate macadamia cookies would be complete without mentioning Mrs. Fields, which Wikipedia says uses white chocolate macadamia as one of their signature cookies.  That sounds about right to me.  I remember thinking of white chocolate macadamia cookies as "special," and making a point to stop by the Mrs. Fields kiosk at the mall whenever I was there.  (And in the 1980s, I was frequently there.  Teenagers and malls: a combination even more popular than white chocolate and macadamia nuts.)

Later, I remember being startled to find white chocolate macadamia cookies at Safeway.  With all the other cookies!  I must have been pretty susceptible to marketing at the time, because it struck me as being like selling foie gras at McDonald's, or veal medallions at KFC.  

White chocolate is, of course, not technically chocolate at all.  It is made with cocoa butter, instead of the cocoa solids or cocoa liquor that are used in "real" chocolate.  Chocolate snobs like to refer to cocoa butter as "the stuff they skim off real chocolate," and that's certainly true, if somewhat sensationalistic.  

Macadamia nuts are often paired with chocolate, but I'm still not entirely sure why they are so strongly tied to white chocolate.  I'm not sure I've ever seen white chocolate paired with anything other than macadamia nuts.  Wouldn't it be good with hazelnuts?  Or almonds?